Company-sponsored "fun" events may undercut short-term productivity,
but at least one expert says they can more than make up for that by gaining a
level of emotional commitment from employees.

By Andrew R. McIlvaine

Monday, January 6, 2014

At
the North Texas Food Bank's sprawling warehouse facility in Dallas, it's fairly
common to witness employees of locally based technology firms,
financial-services providers and other companies cheering each other on as they
work feverishly together to fill backpacks and containers with food destined
for the needy in the greater Dallas/Fort Worth area.

It's
part of the NTFB's ServingU program, in which teams of employees from local
companies spend half a day competing with one another to see who can meet their
goal the fastest, learning to work better as a team and serving their hungry
neighbors in the process.

Most
of the participants have a lot of fun as well, says Colleen Brinkman, who
coordinates the ServingU program.

"They
break into groups, come up with crazy names for their respective teams and then
there's a lot of laughter and joking as they're doing their work
-- but they're serious, too, because they're very intent on meeting their goals
and beating the other teams," she says.

So-called
"fun" programs designed to boost morale in the workplace and
encourage employees to bond with one another have been getting some criticism
lately. A study released in November by Penn State found that fast-food
managers who sponsored fun activities found they cut into employee
productivity. Meanwhile, a rancorous essay in the New York Times
published on December 11 titled "Are We Having Fun Yet?" took dead
aim at what it referred to as the "Fun at Work movement."

The
author, Oliver Burkeman, acidly described morale-boosting activities such as
buying donuts for employees or hanging movie posters in the workplace with
employees' faces replacing the real movie stars as "shudderingly
reminiscent of David Brent, Ricky Gervais's wince-inducing character from the
British version of The Office, or the owner of the nuclear power plant
in The Simpsons, who distracts attention from the risks of lethal
meltdowns by holding Funny Hat Days."

Company-sponsored
fun activities, wrote Burkeman, may only end up making people more miserable, "
. . . reaffirming one of the oldest observations about happiness: When you try
too hard to obtain it, you're almost guaranteed to fail."

The
essay hovered near the top of the Times' most-emailed list for days and
attracted hundreds of comments from readers, the overwhelming majority of them
agreeing with Burkeman.

But
what about that sacred "discretionary effort" that morale-boosting
programs can inspire from employees?

"Investing
in fun sounds soft, but it helps people go the extra mile for their teammates,"
says Lee J. Colan, co-founder of The L Group, a Dallas-based
management-consulting firm.

"Even
contrarians, if you offer them the opportunity to be part of a team, they're
all over it," he says. "That feeling of connectedness is a basic human
need."

Contrarians
are just as necessary to the workplace as cheerleaders, says Colan, and their
preferences also need to be respected. They should not be made to feel
ostracized or penalized should they choose to opt out, he says.

Then
there's the matter of different generations in the workplace, says management
consultant Adrian Gostick, co-author of The Carrot Principle and The
Orange Revolution.

"Young
employees are far more likely to want to bond with one another after work than
older employees, particularly those with families," says Gostick. An
after-work bowling party will probably be more popular with the Gen Y crowd
than the X'ers and boomers, so ensure employees understand that participation
is optional, he says.

Gostick
also took issue with the Penn State study, noting the small survey sample (195
people) and that the study also documented higher morale and better retention
rates at the workplaces that sponsored fun activities.

Gostick
considers himself a firm believer in the importance of having fun at work.

"We
all need to work in an environment that is open, relaxed and honest, and where
leaders don't take themselves so seriously," he says. "All of that
goes a long way."

An
analysis he undertook (along with his business partner, Chester Elton) of the
Great Places to Work Institute's database found that 80 percent of employees
who worked at those organizations described their workplace as fun. Yet, it's
easy to misapply these findings and wind up with events that feel forced and
artificial to employees, says Gostick.

"A
lot of times, leaders will come across a finding like that and say, ‘We've got
to make our workplace more fun -- hey, let's hold an ice-cream social!' "
says Gostick.

A
good rule of thumb is to not only refrain from making participation in
morale-building events mandatory, he says, but also to try tying the events to
specific work-related milestones, such as the completion of a project or a
profitable quarter.

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"When
you do that, it becomes more a part of the business and is less likely to be
perceived as a distraction by your more serious-minded employees," says
Gostick.

Fun
events may -- in the short term, at any rate -- undercut productivity, but they
can more than make up for that by gaining a level of emotional commitment from employees,
says Colan.

"The
emotional commitment is all about connections -- feeling connected to something
larger than oneself, being on a winning team, feeling connected to the people
around me," he says. "Fun activities can get to that need for
connectedness to the people among us, to understanding the person behind the
employee or boss."

Such
activities don't have to be "frou-frou stuff" either, says Colan. "A
lot of people are more community-service oriented -- rather than bowling
competitions and so forth, I'm seeing a growing trend of events that are
outwardly focused."

He
cites the NTFB's ServingU program as a prime example.

ServingU
was launched in 2007 with Dallas-based Southwest Airlines as its first
customer, says Brinkmann. The program can accommodate as many as 150 employees,
who work a half-day shift sorting and processing food items at the NTFB's
warehouse, she says. Companies are charged a fee based on the number of
participating employees.

The
teams are coached and supervised by a NTFB facilitator, who conducts safety
briefings and team-building exercises before and after shifts, says Brinkmann.
The program has proved popular among local employers because it allows
employees and managers to address work-related problems in a non-threatening
atmosphere, she says.

"The
teams will practice working together for 45 minutes, then go back to the
meeting room to discuss what worked and what didn't," she says. "If
problems arose, the facilitator will get the team to focus on where and why the
bottlenecks occurred and how to prevent them, whether it's reassigning people
to different roles, better communication or making sure people have the right
tools."

Once
the adjustments are made, the teams end up meeting their production goals nine
out of 10 times, says Brinkmann.

Afterward,
the teams gather for a celebratory lunch and to go over lessons learned, she
says.

"They're
usually pumped up and sweating and really excited," says Brinkmann. "They
often think they're simply there to perform a service and never expected it to
turn out to be so much fun."